Onward migration from Italy to the UK: changing family language policies

This paper presents a discussion on family language policies of onward-migrating families who have re-migrated from Italy to the UK. In the families of this study, the parents first migrated to Italy from Nigeria, Ghana, India, and Bangladesh, and after a long period of life in Italy and obtaining the Italian citizenship, onward migrated to the UK where are now settled. The research is based on sociolinguistic surveys and interviews with 24 second-generation participants (university students) of onward-migrating families from Italy, both males and females aged between 18 and 23. The interviews aimed to understand how both parents and children (the second generation) reshape their complex linguistic repertoires and re-prioritise their linguistic resources as they settle in the UK as ‘new Italians’. Initial results show that families prioritise the use of English in the UK, but also maintain Italian within the family as parents are more fluent in Italian and for their children is their native language. The latter also use Italian with same-age peer friendships and older siblings. Participants view the language as linguistic capital to enhance their future career prospects in the UK or support a return to Italy. Italian dialects are also sporadically used in conversations with parents in the form of code-switching, although parents have a clear view on avoiding the use of any dialects (either of Italian or the heritage languages) in the family. Heritage languages are spoken by parents among themselves and sometimes with their children, but no active effort is put into place to teach children these languages. English is considered the most important language and, together with a British education to improve their children’s life chances, is the main pull factor for families in the decision to onward migrate.